Beauty Tuesday: New S.F. nail lacquer line boasts cult colors

From the rise of nail art blogs to the fashion industry’s embrace in recent years of out-of-the-box polish hues tied to seasonal trends (remember jade, anyone?), nail color is huge these days with everyone from young teenagers on up. But where’s a girl to go for fingertips that shine in shades you won’t see everywhere else? You might turn to new San Francisco company Floss Gloss. Co-Founders and California College of the Arts alums Aretha Sack and Janine Lee use their art backgrounds to produce unusual, rich hues made without DBP, toluene or formaldehyde.

In the 13-polish collection for fall, Sack and Lee started with a mood board they describe as “1970s-inspired Miami,” and worked with a manufacturer in Richmond, Calif., to produce hues such as Party Bruise, a deep blue-black with brown undertones, and Tanlines, a brownish-nude color reminiscent of deep tans people happily perfected in the days before skin cancer awareness.

“Color is everything…We had to make a palette where every color would work together,” says Sack, a self-described “color snob.”

But the collection intrigues for other reasons. Packaged in retro-minded bottles made in Italy, polishes feature brushes that touch the bottom of their containers, making it possible to actually use most of what’s inside. The professional-grade formula used to make the polish is designed to be nearly opaque with the first coat, yet still cruelty-free and free from DBP, toluene or formaldehyde. A clear base coat and top coat are made to prep and finish at-home manicures with salon-level results. And judging by a recent test, the claims are real: a quickly-applied coat of Neon Nacho stayed on, chip-free for five days.

For Sack and Lee, who came up with the idea for the company while still in school along with friend Monica Kim Garza, the venture is a way to produce the nail polish line that’s the answer to what Lee calls “all of our pet peeves and gripes with nail lacquer.” Mixing colors, painting nails and creating custom nail art was an almost-nightly ritual for the friends during their years in art school. Now that they’ve graduated, Sack and Lee aim to turn their love for color, fashion and nail connoisseurship into a business with appeal both for the legions of nail nerds who read nail art blogs and share nail pictures on social media, but also for the average woman seeking a little something different.

“It’s a safe way to play with color for women…It’s the funnest, cheapest accessory,” says Sack.

Adds Lee:

“And it’s non-commitment.”

For now the collection ($8 each or $98 for 13) is only available via Floss Gloss, though local retailers are in the works.